by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, the Cleveland Institute of Music presents pianist Ilya Itin in Alexander Scriabin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 11 and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 10 Preludes from Op. 3, 23, & 32 in Mixon Hall. It’s free, but tickets are required.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Cleveland Chamber Choir has added two items to its current season: an adaptation of Handel’s Messiah with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Ballet at the Keybank State Theatre in Playhouse Square from March 20-22, and a “docu-concert” featuring scenes and all the songs from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel in collaboration with the Musical Theater Project on June 14 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Gregory Ristow will conduct. More information here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
British conductor and musical scholar Christopher Hogwood died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on this date in 2014.
One of the forerunners in the early music revival movement, Hogwood relaunched the 18th-century Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, clearing a pathway for such later conductors as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM eventually outgrew its concentration on Baroque music and recorded the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as all of Mozart’s piano concertos with Robert Levin.
Hogwood was also noted for transforming Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society into a period instrument ensemble, along with his influential guest conducting appearances with a number of symphony orchestras. His career is detailed in Barry Millington’s obituary in The Guardian.
Click here to watch Hogwood’s performance of Haydn’s last symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (misidentified as the AAM!), and here to watch a performance he led of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with Robert Levin, who provided his own improvised cadenzas.
To see Christopher Hogwood in action as a musical scholar who served on the faculty of London’s Gresham College, here are two lecture-concerts: London: Music Under the Shadow of Handel, and an analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.
